Paris Disguised: Monks & Transvestites:

A pleasure in Paris has always been the fashion.  It expresses itself in all shapes and forms, boldly in the wide windows of the rue Faubourg St. Honoré, and more subtly in the playgrounds, where smartly dressed children frolic in teeny tailored jackets and make me feel dumpy-looking, even in my best work attire.  I am slightly more aware of the way people dress here, because frankly, they dress better.  This has been a claim that Paris has made in its chic, haute-couture glory for generations.  And sometimes the attire has an altogether period-like sense of costume.  Paris boys find creative ways to express themselves in their delicate masculinity – this year, they brought out the colorful and multi-patterned scarves even before necessary.  They wrap them loosely around their necks, atop a sweater, less as a measure to stay warm than as a way to complement their outfits and frame their faces.  And French women are clearly not content in just a sharp suit.  One must add the hat, the bag and of course the shoes.

But that very claim of fashion superiority can be trumped by an even more impressive one.  There is a diversity in dress and clothing here that can be appreciated by any foreigner, and it makes the feeling of everyday costume that much more apparent.

The amount of nationalities represented when, say, riding in the Metro, can be astounding.  The African women by themselves bring an amount of color and liveliness unequalled by most other groups.  Their brightly patterned dresses with matching cloth hats remind you of where you are; in a teeming cosmopolitan capitol.  Same goes for the Indian riders, Asian fashionistas, and Hasids, all in their different ways with their different ‘costumes’.  The streetwear of the suburban ‘rude’ boys, the broaches of the old ladies in the 6th arrondissement, the pinstripe and sleek suits heading toward La Defense; all costumes.  But when my path crossed with that of a particularly costumed character, I started to see just how colorful things could get.

A little while before Halloween rolled around, I met a monk in the metro.  Aside from varieties in fashion, I’ve seen mountain goats, rabid dogs, portable puppet shows, nuns and priests of course, and loads of misfits riding in this city’s public transportation system, but never before a monk.  He was in grey robes and a hood, and the authenticity of his ensemble made me pause.  Perhaps it was the context in which I met him that gave the whole experience an eerily intimate quality.  It was late on a Saturday night and we were both running for the last train.  I had been to a friend’s for dinner, and after drinking a bit too much wine, I stumbled onto the line 12 in hopes of later making the connection to the line 1 which would bring me homeward.  In my stupor I became fascinated with a small poster in the train car, part of the Lire en fete series (Paris’s answer to the New York MTA’s Poetry in Motion), designed in conjunction with the Salon de Revue.  The quote, loosely translated, went as follows:

“ To write, is it the faculty with which we yield ourselves to reality, to curl up against it?  We would love to curl up, but what happens to us then?  What happens to those who do not really know reality?  It is extremely messy-haired.  There is no comb which could smooth it.”

~Elfriede Jelinek,  à l’écart

I decided I had to copy it down.  And so in this frame of mind, I realized that in reality I had completely missed my connection.  And it was getting dangerously late (which means 12.45 am when you’re trying to make it home on the metro).  So I shuffled over to the other side of the platform at the next station, impatiently waited for the train in the opposite direction, and then broke out in a run once I reached Concorde station.

It was there that I first noticed the young man.  In this fleeting and amusing urban moment of rushing through a deserted train station, it was as if someone had injected an individual from a completely unattached and incongruent time.  I suddenly had the image in mind of the Where’s Waldo books, in which knights in armor and Egyptian princesses are lost in crowds of city dwellers, eluding searching eyes.  It seemed as though he were dressed for a show, or an early celebration of the upcoming dress-up holiday, because I had never seen someone in such full regalia.  His flowing robes and sandals made him seem so unreal, as if he had crawled out of the urban sprawl in a dreamlike way, holding some oblique meaning for me.  Maybe this was my diversion from messy reality.  At any rate I think I might have been observing him with just a little too much concentration.  Once on the platform, where there were not many stragglers, it became evident that a conversation would ensue.

I don’t know why the conversation seemed inappropriate.  I had the sense throughout that this was a person of extreme purity of experience, someone who had given up much of the world that I embraced as my own, and at the same time someone who exhibited a boyish and fervent interest in finding out all about me, a random citizen of the secular world.  He didn’t hit on me or anything, but I realize now that having a frank discussion about your religious convictions and life in general with a clearly devout stranger amounts to almost the same thing.  And sadly I might have projected onto him a certain judgmental quality that was born out of his simple naïveté.  He returned my reluctant curiosity with much the same thing, asking me all sorts of questions about my background and my life here.  I learned that he was originally French but had spent his last several years in a monastery and orphanage in Brazil.  He mentioned his work as a missionary, and perhaps the (erroneous) stereotype that I had stored in my own experience was apparent; I had heard stories of missionaries going to regions of extreme poverty for purposes of exploitation.  He began describing his ‘life of penitence’ and silence, at which point I began to feel guilty like I always have when comparing myself to respected religious members of society.  In moments like these my life seems anything but penitent.  That too may have shown on my face, since afterward I began to hide the truth to several of my answers.  He asked if I was married, to which I responded with a laugh and brushing-off: I am far too young! I said.  I felt then that he was analyzing me a little, but in any case if I had told him that I was gay, it would have no longer been possible to politely wrap up the conversation before my stop came.  Matters sometimes need not be complicated.  I did tell him I was Jewish, and we both sort of nodded in an impromptu monotheistic agreement.  Then it was time for me to go, and so we ended by trading email addresses.  He pulled out a small golden pendant with the image of Mary depicted on the face, and the mental picture of the missionary in a faraway land came up once again.  It acted as his sort-of business card, I thought, and I wondered if it sufficed before the age of email as a way (for those who believe) to ‘get in touch’.

Once off the train, I realized that my uncomfortable feeling during this interlude was completely unfounded.  I played with the trinket he gave me, reflecting on the infinite differences that suggested themselves between our two lives, both of which we had just hurriedly laid side by side and compared in the space of 8-10 minutes.  In thinking of Paris disguises, I decided that in this case it was I who was wearing one, while the monk was being open, frank and real.  Perhaps he had several hang-ups, projections and stereotypes as well, but either he hid them deftly or was willing to put them aside to talk with me.

Soon after it was time to start thinking of disguises in more concrete terms.  The eternal question is:  Does Paris celebrate Halloween?  Is it just a diversion?  Is it too American?? These things must be taken into account when deciding to what extent you want to dress up and go out on the street for the evening.  This year, it was clear that at least Paris was acknowledging its existence, mainly thanks to the somewhat aggressive Halloween ad campaign by Disney to boost its rate of visitors.  But Paris could be ignoring this too because after all, how much more American can you get than Disney??  Coming from the Village in New York City, where Halloween is undeniably in the air for the week prior, I was left in a state of piqued curiosity: could Paris compare?

The answer, sadly, is no.  But it isn’t for lack of trying.  I sternly believe that people are getting into it, and Halloween is catching on.  But it will take some time (as things do here).  I was glad to say that there were quite a number of witches’ hats and capes near St. Michel, but of course that’s tourist central.  The desire to go all the way with costumes, as you sometimes can come upon in an American city on Halloween, seems all but absent here.  I was ready to give up.  But then, as I continued onward with my evening, I discovered a bastion of Halloween hope, one outpost to the alternative and whacky that is an absolute must on this night.  I am speaking, of course, of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which plays every Friday and Saturday night with a special on Halloween at the Studio Galande, 42 rue Galande, metro St Michel.

The proud tradition of Rocky sees no borders, and has happily been projected at this tiny slip of a theatre for the past 20 years.  The theatre is worth a visit even if Rocky isn’t your thing (it’s everybody’s thing!), since their selection of ‘daytime’ films is diverse and always contains that film you meant to see a few months ago that everyone was talking about.  The street is also quite charming, with several welcoming bars and shops, and the neighborhood boasts several small and traditional theatres famous throughout Paris.

But back to Rocky.  The crowd here, at least for Halloween, pulled out all the stops, with costumes paying homage to film characters, pumpkins, animals and psychotics.  And that’s not including the healthy display of transvestites, both on screen and off!  How comforting is it to know that if you ever feel homesick for that specific brand of ‘midnight movie’, Rocky is here for you every week!  Even in Paris.  The small difference, of course, is that the group of actors who perform in front of the screen here do it in French, but that is not to say it takes away from the fun.  The Irrational Masters – the troupe which I saw, offer a running French commentary that is a mile a minute, but even if you get only 3 out of 10 jokes you’re still slapping your knee in hysterics.  Their wordplays with the subtitling offer a whole new level of mocking and fun.  And French etiquette is out the window – you are in fact urged to bring rice (for the wedding scene) and water (for the storm scene).  Yes, you may throw them at your fellow audience members.  Any viewer would appreciate the Rocky tradition in this context; it puts a great international spin on the chaotic nonsense that makes this cult film so cult-ish.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show, showing at: Studio Galande, 42 rue Galande, Paris 75005. tel. 33 (0) 1 43 54 72 71.  Friday and Saturday nights at 10.10 pm.  Cost: 7 euros.  Metro: St Michel or Maubert-Mutualité.  More info:www.studiogalande.fr, www.rocky.fr